GoM on Bhopal gas tragedy to meet on Friday

New Delhi: The reconstituted Group of
Ministers on the Bhopal gas tragedy will meet on Friday,
Home Minister P Chidambaram Tuesday said, a day after Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh asked the panel to submit its report
to the Cabinet in 10 days.

"The GoM will meet on the afternoon of June 18,"
Chidambaram told reporters here after his briefing on a
meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs.

Asked whether former Union Carbide CEO Warren
Anderson`s extradition will be part of the GoM discussion,
Chidambaram said he has no idea about the nature of the
deliberations that will take place.

"I have no idea. Let us see what papers are circulated
by the Ministry of Chemicals and Petro-Chemicals. They have
promised to circulate papers by tomorrow. Let us see what
issues are raised by them. And then we will decide whether any
additional issues are to be addressed," he said.

The Prime Minister had yesterday asked the nine-member
GoM headed by Chidambaram to meet immediately and report to
the Cabinet within 10 days.

The GoM, set up last week, has been asked to assess
the options and remedies available to the government in the
light of the Bhopal court`s verdict in the gas tragedy case.

The GoM was reconstituted to go into a range of issues
including the relief and rehabilitation of victims and their
families.

The Prime Minister`s decision came even as the BJP
and the Congress engaged in a fresh war of words on the issue.

Senior Congress leader Arjun Singh, who was Madhya
Pradesh Chief Minister in 1984, has maintained a stoic silence
over why Anderson was allowed to leave the country soon after
the tragedy.

Nearly 26 years after the disaster left over 15,000
dead, former Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and
six others were sentenced to two years imprisonment by a
Bhopal court last week.